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Flying Zamboni posted:Hey thanks for posting this, I've been looking for a solo ttrpg with a more directed campaign and the Bone Lord stuff in your first link looks like exactly what I wanted. I played through the first adventure and had a good time with it. Glad to hear! Bottom Liner posted:I think that comes down to how you approach and what you want out of solo systems/games you’re conveying to solo. I find the most success with applying simple narrative oracles to mechanics than vice-versa. Yeah, I've found more and more that solo TRPG gaming has a couple of distinctive like-- types of games that all fall under the umbrella of solo TRPGs. Like you have games that are more focused on journaling or telling a story or games that are hex crawls where you're exploring or mapping out a space. Some games are extended combat simulators of different varieties. How directed versus how freeform of an experience can vary as well, and everyone has varied tastes and levels of what they're looking for or tolerate over all of this. A person might have more broad interest, or looking for something more specialized.
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Nov 5, 2022 01:03
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Potsticker posted:I wonder what their notes must have looked like when writing these because it's just a fabulous glut of interwoven content. Since I'm helping to edit/logic-proof book 5 of the Vulcanverse series, I've been in e-mail contact with them quite a bit. The last description Dave gave me of Book 5 was "Gordion Knot." So, multiply that by six and you get...
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Nov 5, 2022 01:36
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Everyone posted:Since I'm helping to edit/logic-proof book 5 of the Vulcanverse series, I've been in e-mail contact with them quite a bit. The last description Dave gave me of Book 5 was "Gordion Knot." So, multiply that by six and you get... That's amazing. 
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Nov 5, 2022 01:53
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Angrymog posted:I've just started playing Spires End: Hildegard Max posted:I'm really enjoying it so far. I finished chapter 2 last night. I'm hoping some stuff the game has set up starts paying off soonish, I have a real cavalcade of stuff in my inventory. I also got Hidegard from the Kickstarter, and did a single full playthrough so far. I really enjoyed it, though the inventory creep did get a little bit out of control to the point I had to re-stack some cards to free up space. Some of the later chapters do interesting things to keep replayability fresh which I appreciated - I might sit down and do another playthrough this weekend! I do appreciate that it's easy enough to just play through a chapter at a time if you need to play in short bursts, rather than making you commit to a hour or two per playthrough. P.S. If you're not aware, the very last card in the Chapter 4 deck pile is a quick reference card that you should pull out and keep around while playing - saves a lot of referring back to the rulebook. Podima fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Nov 5, 2022 |
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Nov 5, 2022 18:31
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Yeah I like how easy it is to set it aside, I don't have to do much to keep track of what I have done already.
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Nov 5, 2022 18:45
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I may have found it here, but sharing this great resource for Starforged/Ironsworn/general oracles. I've been using it on the iPad while traveling and it's really fantastic. https://nboughton.uk/apps/ You can save them as an applet on IOS or get the desktop versions. Really nice work if you don't mind using digital tools.
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Nov 10, 2022 17:59
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Skwirl posted:There's gonna be another itch.io charity bundle. This one for trans rights in Florida. I found out about it by clicking a link on the Solovember twitter thread, so like most of these things I suspect there will be a decent number of solo rpgs in there. 29 hours till this goes live and there's already 455 submissions 
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Nov 11, 2022 03:50
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GreenBuckanneer posted:29 hours till this goes live and there's already 455 submissions When is this thing going live? I don't want to forget to buy it! Says on the page there are two more days to go? Is that until we can pay or just until submissions close?
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Nov 12, 2022 21:56
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HopperUK posted:When is this thing going live? I don't want to forget to buy it! Says on the page there are two more days to go? Is that until we can pay or just until submissions close? I think previous bundles were up for a month, so you'll have plenty time. I imagine it will be up a day or two after submissions close. They'll need time to check to make sure nothing horrible got submitted, but at least for the ttrpgs that are 2 pages long, that won't take long to check, plus there's a bunch that were in previous trans rights bundles
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Nov 12, 2022 22:05
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Skwirl posted:I think previous bundles were up for a month, so you'll have plenty time. I imagine it will be up a day or two after submissions close. They'll need time to check to make sure nothing horrible got submitted, but at least for the ttrpgs that are 2 pages long, that won't take long to check, plus there's a bunch that were in previous trans rights bundles Good stuff, thanks.
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Nov 12, 2022 22:17
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The deadline got extended. I slapped together something for the original date of November 11, and now I see that submissions are still open.
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Nov 13, 2022 04:03
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https://twitter.com/deathbybadger/status/1593549149902983176?t=gfl0ZUlC5M9Bcie29YIm1Q&s=19
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Nov 19, 2022 21:21
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I finished Campaign Turn 2 for my 5 Parsecs from Home space opera shoot-em-up skirmish wargame. I wrote the results up to be a narrative story and that is posted on my blog here. If you want to know the mechanics of what was happening behind the scenes (and how I screwed up a couple things) that is here. Speaking of solo games has anyone tried The Broken Cask solo game of running a fantasy inn?
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Nov 21, 2022 00:05
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I’ve been wanting to give solo RPGs a shot, but need some advice on how to start. I have real bad decision paralysis, there is a lot of material and not a lot of clear directed advice out there. I started building a setting for a theoretical OSEs campaign using the world building tables from the free version of Worlds Without Number as a fun creative exercise. Just an amazing experience, I cannot recommend it enough. I really loved the guided creative process it provided. I don’t really have the time to organize and run a campaign, but I’d really love keep exploring and developing the world. I want to “fill out” the sandbox setting that I have started by using more random tables to help inspire me to create more in the world. What I’d like to do, is start running a solo OSEs game with small parties maybe of 3-5 characters. Randomly generate stories, NPCs, dungeons, and areas for them to explore. I love the low fantasy and sword and sorcery vibes of early DnD stuff and really want to just use OSE as a system the dungeon crawling and exploring crunchiness seems fun. Not a huge fan of how deadly the game is but I’ll give it a shot. What tools would best work for me? My plan was to purchase the Mythic Oracle and the Tome of Random Adventure Design. Is the Tome a good fit for a more generate as you go style or are there better generation tools out there? I’ve heard Scarlet Heroes has a lot of good generation tools but would it be helpful for a game with multiple characters?
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Dec 10, 2022 13:22
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Drinking With Nixon posted:I’ve been wanting to give solo RPGs a shot, but need some advice on how to start. I have real bad decision paralysis, there is a lot of material and not a lot of clear directed advice out there. I think the best tool for solo role-playing now is ChatGPT. It's an intelligent chat bot which can DM a game for you or randomly generate any kind of content you ask for. Its basically magic: https://chat.openai.com/chat For example it made this when I asked it for a magical item named Perry the Parrying Dagger Perry the Magical Parrying Dagger quote:Unlike many other magical weapons, Perry is not just a simple inanimate object. It is an intelligent, sentient being with a sharp tongue and an abrasive personality. It is known for its sarcastic quips and cutting comments, and it is not afraid to speak its mind, even to its wielder. Rutibex fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Dec 10, 2022 |
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Dec 10, 2022 15:47
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Rutibex posted:I think the best tool for solo role-playing now is ChatGPT. It's an intelligent chat bot which can DM a game for you or randomly generate any kind of content you ask for. Its basically magic: I tried doing something similar and I kept getting crap about it doesn't know about stuff like that, but generated a description
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Dec 10, 2022 17:13
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What is OSE?
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Dec 10, 2022 17:24
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Perry Mason Jar posted:What is OSE? Old School Essentials, I'd think.
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Dec 10, 2022 17:29
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GreenBuckanneer posted:I tried doing something similar and I kept getting crap about it doesn't know about stuff like that, but generated a description Yeah its very tricky. It will often refuse to do things that it is totally able to do. But you can coax it with the right prompt. We have a whole thread about tricking these cunning genies into granting our wishes https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4000251
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Dec 10, 2022 17:45
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Since Solo RPGs are something that are highly person as what any given person wants out of the experience it can be hard to determine what clear directed advice will actually help. "Better" generation tools is a highly subjective thing, for instance. You might be okay with tables you like but you have to modify to fit the system you're running or you might like something better that has all the rules for the game you're running in mind even if the tables themselves are more simplistic. For me, oracle-style play where you're asking a bunch of questions and rolling for the answer doesn't work very well for me, but I really enjoy having tables with a bunch of pre-defined situations. And despite that being generally true for me Starforged is a game that felt like it floats in the middle of those two things and I really like how it works. For clear, directed advice I'd say One, check out some youtube videos of people playing or reviewing the things you're interested in buying. See if that seems like a fun experience to you and if so, then give it a try! Once you can articulate what you liked/didn't like about what you saw or what you played, then it'll be easier to give advice on what things might appeal to you based on that. Two, since you mentioned doing a bit of DIY work with the WWN rules, what type of random tables are you specifically looking for? If you need help with quest and dungeon layout rules, I've liked the d100 Dungeon World Builder book for its hexmap generation rules (The only thing I feel like it's missing is that biome placement is too random) and quest generation and while the dungeon generation in base d100 dungeon is passable, I've much preferred the style used by the Micro Chapbook RPG books I've posted a bit about before, though that's been a big DIY process for me into making my own tables because wow a lot of those books have really bad tables, but I like the system and the mechanics for how dungeons are laid out appeal to me.
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Dec 10, 2022 22:20
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HopperUK posted:I've started a playthrough of Conduit, a game about receiving cryptic messages from some kind of entity. It's played over 28 (or 29, I forget) entries and it has some fun prompts! You get to make little collages here and there, or look in books for words and write on them, and the like. It has a decent bit of randomisation so you could play it more than once if you wanted and get quite a different result. Recommended! Do you know if this is available anywhere other than for Kickstarter backers yet?
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Dec 12, 2022 06:32
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Potsticker posted:Since Solo RPGs are something that are highly person as what any given person wants out of the experience it can be hard to determine what clear directed advice will actually help. "Better" generation tools is a highly subjective thing, for instance. You might be okay with tables you like but you have to modify to fit the system you're running or you might like something better that has all the rules for the game you're running in mind even if the tables themselves are more simplistic. For me, oracle-style play where you're asking a bunch of questions and rolling for the answer doesn't work very well for me, but I really enjoy having tables with a bunch of pre-defined situations. And despite that being generally true for me Starforged is a game that felt like it floats in the middle of those two things and I really like how it works. Thank you for the thoughtful reply, I admit I was a bit frustrated by your answer. But I took your advice and researched more. I totally get what you mean now. It seems like everyone has a way that works for them and the fun of solo play is experimenting with loads of different resources. You were right, I was very unfocused and there is no magical solution. I gathered about 5 different resources and mashed them together, didn’t work and juggling all the different parts felt like more work than play. So, I scrapped my original idea. I took some advice from YouTube and started simple. Just play with a system that has solo play in mind, and Scarlet Heroes seems like what I’m looking for. The dungeon building tools seem good enough and I really just need to focus on actually getting a system that I can run. I did my first session only using Scarlet Heroes, and had a blast. Thank you for the advice, you gave the advice I needed not what I wanted. I looked into the d100 Dungeon system and looks really interesting. Definitely going to give it a go.
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Dec 18, 2022 12:05
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I'm so glad it worked out for you! I'm excited to hear if you decide to try more things or if Scarlet Heroes just does everything you were looking for and maybe talk about your experience with it a bit?
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Dec 18, 2022 12:45
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MockingQuantum posted:Do you know if this is available anywhere other than for Kickstarter backers yet? I have no idea, sorry!
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Dec 18, 2022 14:35
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Potsticker posted:I'm so glad it worked out for you! I'm excited to hear if you decide to try more things or if Scarlet Heroes just does everything you were looking for and maybe talk about your experience with it a bit? I’d love to haha! I went on a bit of an OSR kick and really fell in love with exploration being the key element of gameplay. I stumbled upon Worlds Without End and rolled up a world and it seemed like an interesting place to explore. My main worry was how to capture the tension of exploring the dungeon or the unknown. My world has an interesting skeleton but has nothing else. Questions like what are Kobolds doing in the mine? Aren’t really answered. I was looking for tools to randomly make, populate, and create a history of a location. I found two tools that are useful for me personally. I like getting prompts and using it as a springboard. The Perilous Wilds and the Scarlet Heroes dungeon generators clicked with me. For my first session I tried using OSRIC dungeon generator, along with the Basic Old School Essentials rules. I rolled up 4 characters and just dove into a dungeon. It worked really well and created the feeling of old school dungeon crawling. But it was really clunky and just takes too much effort. I will probably revisit it once I get a bit more comfortable playing solo. I scrapped my first session and went simpler, just the Scarlet Heroes book. Focused on one character and started the session entering the dungeon. I rolled a forgotten shrine with 13 locations with a quest tag of Slow Poison. The dungeon was populated with Lizardfolk. I used the Oracle included and rolled planning and debt for the Lizardfolk’s motivation. I wrote down the first thing I thought of; A lizard Chief serving a forgotten god plans to unleash poison into the surrounding areas because the locals no longer pay homage to the god. Award winning? No but it was amazing to be able to make an adventure on the fly. I only was able to clear one room in my first session. I spawned an NPC who was an ex-lover who was there to destroy something inside the shrine. I spawned a random encounter and fumbled through my first combat. I really do think that Scarlet Heroes has everything a beginner needs to play a heroic old school style game. I’m already looking at various hexcrawl systems if I manage to escape the dungeon in one piece. Wilderness Hexplore will be used on my first attempt. Drinking With Nixon fucked around with this message at 14:52 on Dec 18, 2022 |
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Dec 18, 2022 14:50
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Finally got my copy of Ironsworn: Starforged in, looks very pretty
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Dec 28, 2022 14:59
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I saw a physical copy of Five Parsecs from Home while out and about the other day, and it seemed interesting, but I'm not experienced enough with solo RPGs to tell if it's what I want from a game or not. Can someone with some experience with it tell me about the pros and cons, as well as other alternatives that might catch me more if it's not what I want?
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Jan 7, 2023 22:48
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girl dick energy posted:I saw a physical copy of Five Parsecs from Home while out and about the other day, and it seemed interesting, but I'm not experienced enough with solo RPGs to tell if it's what I want from a game or not. Can someone with some experience with it tell me about the pros and cons, as well as other alternatives that might catch me more if it's not what I want? Five Parsecs is a solo minis based wargame more than RPG. It’s a whole different animal really.
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Jan 7, 2023 23:31
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ShutteredIn posted:Five Parsecs is a solo minis based wargame more than RPG. It’s a whole different animal really. Yes and no. There are RPG aspects, like character advancement, building skill sets, classes, characters come and go. But it’s like Xcom more than it is Baldur’s Gate. It’s pretty neat though and if you like tabletop games with persistent characters and advancement like Blood Bowl, or Fallout Wasteland Warfare, then it’s actually pretty great. You can slather on a layer of role playing on top as much as you want. You build reputation with factions, and go on jobs for them. It would be tres easy to do a lot more character building than the game requires. Oh, pros and cons. Well. It’s really well developed and supported. Nodicweasel produces a lot of extra material and experimental rules and makes them available on his patreon. The combat system is straightforward and satisfying and there are limits on your characters and optional difficulty levels to keep you from steamrolling everything. There’s even NewGame+ features should you wish to go that route. Technically, you don’t need minis. You can use stand-ups, legos, army men, whatever you want and pop cans and Tupperware for terrain. If you want an excuse to get cool minis, it’s a greatly great one. I suppose you could also whip up a Tabletop Simulator or Roll20 version if there aren’t those already. You can buy the PDF cheaper if that’s a concern, but it’s actually a pretty spiffy book, and worth the scratch even if you only read through it, IMO but then again I’m weird with liking to read rules for games I’ll never play Cons I guess … there is record keeping with your crew, ship, supplies, Allie’s, enemies, etc but it’s not overwhelming. Also, minis may not be interesting to you, and the core gameplay IS the combat. There are simple rules for space travel, but pretty much everything takes place on the ground. I would like even a little bit more chunky space combat and travel system. But the game really expects you to be on the ground almost entirely. Oh I also really hate the rule that you can’t take off with even one point of damage on your ship or you risk catastrophic damage. I house-ruled that out. It’s kind of silly and goes against the grain of the stuff it’s inspired by like Firefly and Star Wars. There also is a fantasy version called 5 leagues from the borderlands if that’s your thing, and they just came out with an interesting desert based Dark Sun-ish motif. Doctor Zero fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Jan 7, 2023 |
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Jan 7, 2023 23:39
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ShutteredIn posted:Five Parsecs is a solo minis based wargame more than RPG. It’s a whole different animal really.
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Jan 7, 2023 23:40
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girl dick energy posted:Are there other good open-world space solo RPGs? Like what X3 or Elite or Star Control feel like but with less real-time waiting around.
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Jan 7, 2023 23:44
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girl dick energy posted:Are there other good open-world space solo RPGs? Like what X3 or Elite or Star Control feel like but with less real-time waiting around. I haven't played/read them enough to rate them as good or not but you may want to look into D100 Space and 5150 Fringe Space. Full disclosure. I own D100 Space and got about 30 pages into it but at that time got sidetracked by something else. What I had read was interesting. I also own 5150 Known Space and it is definitely an expansion that requires 5150: New Beginnings. Also Doctor Zero pretty much covered any thoughts I had regarding 5 Parsecs from Home, which I really enjoy.
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Jan 8, 2023 00:17
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girl dick energy posted:Are there other good open-world space solo RPGs? Like what X3 or Elite or Star Control feel like but with less real-time waiting around. Starforged just came out, by the same people that did Ironsworn.
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Jan 8, 2023 04:50
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StarkRavingMad posted:Starforged just came out, by the same people that did Ironsworn.
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Jan 8, 2023 04:59
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It's an evolution of Powered by the Apocalypse system that generates a lot of narrative from a variety of Moves. The main "game" part of it is managing a variety of resources and Assets that represent feats, items, and other types of character power you'd see in traditional games. The fantasy version is free to checkout: https://www.ironswornrpg.com/downloads Ironsworn is cool because it creates the narratives that story generation games like Thousand Year Old Vampire do, but there's still an actual game to it and it's not just a journaling game.
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Jan 8, 2023 05:02
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Bottom Liner posted:It's an evolution of Powered by the Apocalypse system that generates a lot of narrative from a variety of Moves. The main "game" part of it is managing a variety of resources and Assets that represent feats, items, and other types of character power you'd see in traditional games. The fantasy version is free to checkout: Yeah, it's generally considered one of the best in the solo RPG field. Recommend you download Ironsworn for free and see if you dig thuse like space ships, robot buddies, space oriented skills, etc). Ironsworn also has an expansion, which isn't free, Ironsworn Delve which adds rules for doing deep dungeon dives, I think that's $12. If Ironsworn but in space seems like what you are looking for, you can buy Starforged in PDF form for $20: https://getstarforged.com/products/ironsworn-starforged-digital-edition-pdf, it also has the equivalent of Delve in it. You can't get a physical version of Starforged yet unless you backed the Kickstarter, they're expected to be selling those soon, but the PDF should be fine to play with. StarkRavingMad fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Jan 8, 2023 |
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Jan 8, 2023 06:08
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StarkRavingMad posted:Ironsworn also has an expansion, which isn't free, Ironsworn Delve which adds rules for doing deep dungeon dives, I think that's $12. If you got the Racial Equality Bundle a while back IS:Delve was included in that a few other similar bundles since.
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Jan 8, 2023 07:19
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girl dick energy posted:I saw a physical copy of Five Parsecs from Home while out and about the other day, and it seemed interesting, but I'm not experienced enough with solo RPGs to tell if it's what I want from a game or not. Can someone with some experience with it tell me about the pros and cons, as well as other alternatives that might catch me more if it's not what I want? Pros- depending on how much you want to write down to recall what you did last time you played, I find I can get through 1.5~2 full campaign turns in about an hour. I always end a midweek session feeling like I advanced the plot for my mercs and usually if I end on a .5 campaign turn, it's right before my next battle so it's a cliffhanger motivating me to arrange my next session. Cons- It took me an embarrassing amount of time to get sure about the combat rules but rather than blame the rulebook, I'm chalking that up to having not done a solo rp before 5 Parsecs. 5 Leagues feels more like an RPG than 5 Parsecs but I am thinking that's because after the spacemans game they had some feedback and ideas to make their next game more balanced between ttrpg and wargame. An alternate is Ironsworn: Starforged which has a scifi setting as well but that one feels more like journaling with a d100 table prompt than an RPG to me. It also has a fantasy game, simply- Ironsworn. I would also add that I think another 1+ players option is Stargrave. It is scifi as well, but I have the starting books but haven't had a chance to try it out yet. Doctor Zero posted:Nodicweasel Doctor Zero posted:There also is a fantasy version called 5 leagues from the borderlands if that’s your thing, and they just came out with an interesting desert based Dark Sun-ish motif.
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Jan 9, 2023 04:05
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chainchompz posted:
yes, and his nemesis, "Modicweasel" 
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Jan 10, 2023 19:48
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Has anyone played this: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/399971/Lichdom--A-solo-RPG-about-the-perilous-journey-of-a-sorcerer-towards-immortality seems interesting enough
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Jan 13, 2023 08:01
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